Very excited to share my exploration of the phylogenetics of early ray-finned fishes, out today in the Anatomical Record! Really busy day but I’ll have more info shortly.
anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
The "Vibes-based Species Concept" wins again
Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/30/s...
I get that the news cycle is packed right now, but I just heard from a colleague at the Smithsonian that this is fully a GIANT SQUID BEING EATEN BY A SPERM WHALE and it’s possibly the first ever confirmed video according to a friend at NOAA
10 YEAR OLD ME IS LOSING HER MIND (a thread 🧵)
Tolchard, F. B., Perkins, B. W., & Nesbitt, S. J. 2025 Silesaurid (Archosauria: Dinosauriformes) remains from the base of the Dockum Group (Late Triassic: Otischalkian) of Texas provide new insights to the North American record of dinosauriforms. The Anatomical Record, 1–21. doi.org/10.1002/ar.2...
Check out our new paper (and my first!) on silesaurid material from the Dockum Group of Texas. This material extends the temporal range of silesaurids in southwestern North America and elucidates the high range of individual and ontogenetic variation in early dinosauriforms!
doi.org/10.1002/ar.2...
Excited to share our new paper on a new fossil fish from the Late Triassic of Texas and the evolution of elongate jaws. Please let me know if you would like a copy! Shout out to my co-authors
Michelle Stocker, Sterling Nesbitt, and Maranda Stricklin.
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Cast of the skeleton of the coelacanth Mawsonian
#FossilFriday The Cretaceous Brazilian coelacanth Mawsonia at the University of Michigan Natural History Museum
My BBC Wildlife article on the surprising new ornithomimid #Mexidracon from the Late Cretaceous of Mexico ... www.discoverwildlife.com/dinosaurs/me... #dinosaurs #theropods #fossils
I know this sentiment is well shared, but every once in a while I think about how beautifully powerful and inspiring these paintings are.
"Sully" Sullenberger vs "Coop" Cooper (from Interstellar)
Over-achieving pilots who beat the odds and saved the day despite nay-sayers, and both referred to by shortened versions of their last names.
#FossilFriday A few views of the holotype brain case of the giant Albian nodosaurid Peleroplites. CEUM 26331
Important new paper: Rogers et al 2025, Updating the Upper Cretaceous (Campanian) Two Medicine Formation of Montana: Lithostratigraphic revisions, new CA-ID-TIMS U-Pb ages, and a calibrated framework for dinosaur occurrences. 35 pages, worth reading! pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsabulletin/...
A. Danison et al. (2024)
Chimerism in specimens referred to Saurophaganax maximus reveals a new species of Allosaurus (Dinosauria, Theropoda)
Vertebrate Anatomy Morphology Palaeontology 12(1): 81-114
doi: doi.org/10.18435/vam...
journals.library.ualberta.ca/vamp/index.p...
What if the world ends but life still goes on...
Asteriornis, a few years after the KPg extinction event, nesting in the remains of a mosasaur.
#paleoart #sciart #paleostream #birds
Louis Parsons working on Scolosaurus: Illustrated London News, 16 February 1924, p. 263 (Natural History Museum Archives TCC-ARC-1734a from Professional fossil preparators at the British Museum (Natural History), 1843–1990)
From Skeletal and dermal armor reconstruction of Euoplocephalus tutus (Ornithischia: Ankylosauridae) from the Late Cretaceous Oldman Formation of Alberta. Scolosaurus cutleri" showing the topology of the anterior armor. Courtesy of the British Museum (Natural History) .
Picture in colour
Gorgosaurus and Scolosaurus, Zdenek Burian, 1964
The mummy of an ankylosaurid dinosaur, Scolosaurus, described by the queer Hungarian icon, Franz Nopcsa, in 1928. The holotype with amazingly preserved "carpace" of osteoderms, scutes and skin impressions is on display at the Natural History Museum London. 🪖
This is not a drill, a mummified sabretooth cat has been published from the #Pleistocene permafrost of Russia. It's a Homotherium cub! The team (Lopatin et al.) reckon it's Homotherium latidens. It's too young to have enlarged upper canines. Paper is OA ... www.nature.com/articles/s41... cont...
(My first post) A hadrosaur arm bone absolutely covered in toothmarks made by a carnivorous #dinosaur, probably a #tyrannosaur, although there have been suggestions that these small marks might be from #raptors. US public lands (BLM); Judith River Fm, Montana; ~76Ma, Cretaceous. #fossilfriday
Montage of marine reptile images from my own research, showing robot plesiosaur paddles in action, the ichthyosaur Malawania (image by Bob Nicholls, colouring by C M Kosemen), a plesiosaur phylogeny, and images of the fossil Malawania from Iraq.
Montage of pterosaur images from my research, showing reconstructed pterosaurs in life, graphs showing pterosaur vertebrae plotted in morphospace, and me holding the large, robust neck vertebra of Hatzegopteryx.
Montage of spinosaur images from my research, showing render of a brain superimposed on the head of a baryonychine (art by Anthony Hutchings), a spinosaurid cladogram, and a montage of baryonychine brains.
Books I've written, shown standing up on a shelf so that we're looking at their spines.
Seeing nice uptick in followers here as more people migrate over from Twitter. Hi - welcome to BSky! I'm Darren and I write about amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals (living and extinct); I blog regularly at Tetrapod Zoology tetzoo.com and I also publish #books and academic research...
Skeletal cast of #Tarbosaurus, a Mongolian relative of #Tyrannosaurus, at the Galerie de Paléontologie et d’Anatomie comparée in Paris, France. #FossilFriday #Dinosaurs #Paleontology
